


Cocoon

by recoveringrabbit



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, FitzSimmons Secret Santa, Pregnancy, future FitzSimmons with babies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-23
Updated: 2014-12-23
Packaged: 2018-03-03 01:51:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 6,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2833811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/recoveringrabbit/pseuds/recoveringrabbit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cocoon (n): a cozy, warm covering; (v): to envelop or surround protectively, to insulate</p>
<p>In which FitzSimmons have high opinions of what a two-year-old can comprehend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Week 16

It is Week 16, and as Jemma sits watching her son go up the ladder down the slide up the ladder down the slide she can’t help but feel this was less nerve-wracking last time. Last time they had only had to tell Coulson (who cleared his throat several times before saying “well, that was irresponsible”) and Skye (who had outright cried and taken care of telling everyone else). But they were grown adults with more or less their full mental capabilities and Jemma didn’t have to worry about them. Archie, on the other hand, she does. It’s her job as his mother.

“You were the one who said we needed to tell him in the first place,” Fitz accuses, throwing up his hands. “Said he needed plenty of time to get used to the idea, to understand what was happening. ‘But Fitz, what if he thinks I’ve got a tumour—‘ never mind he’s only two—”

“That is not what I sound like,” she protests, but her heart isn’t in it and she wraps her hands around her neck worriedly. He is only two; he probably won’t understand even if they tell him now. At least that’s what her research suggests. It couldn’t hurt to wait awhile longer.

Fitz nudges her with his shoulder. “What are you so worried about? He probably won’t understand it yet. Even if he does, there’s nothing he can do about it.”

“What if he’s not happy?”

“We’ll give him digestives and he will be.” Relenting under her glare, he takes her hand and rubs his thumb over her knuckles. “We’ll be happy. And we’re the ones that have all the information, so we’re the ones that can draw the correct conclusions, yeah?”

Jemma rests her free hand on her stomach. Scientifically, she knows that the flutterings she feels cannot actually be the baby, not yet, but her heart beats a little faster all the same. She is happy. And Fitz is beyond happy; he’s thrilled; he’s ecstatic. He had cried when she told him. She had cried too. “You’re right,” she says.

“As usual.”

She looks up at him and rolls her eyes dramatically, just so he knows.

Just then, Archie runs over to them in a blaze of bouncing curls, carefully cupping something in both pudgy hands. “Look, Mama. Worm.”

He knows better than to show these kinds of things to his father. Bumping her head against her son’s affectionately, she leans over to look. “Lovely, darling, only that’s a caterpillar.”

Screwing up his face he tries to copy her and can’t quite manage it. Instead he falls back on his favourite question, which they hear an average of a billion times a day: “What is?”

“A disgusting bug.”

“A fascinating insect,” she corrects, shooting her husband a look as she transfers the caterpillar from Archie’s hand to her own. “Right now it looks a bit like a worm, but it’s going to eat and eat until it gets so fat it has to roll itself up in a cocoon. That’s like a sleeping bag that covers the whole thing. And when it comes out it will be a butterfly, or possibly a moth.”

Familiar with butterflies and moths, Archie eyes the insect skeptically and asks his second favourite question: “How?”

“I’m not sure, darling. That’s just how it grows.”

“But how, Mama?”

Fitz leans over to scoop him up and sets him across both of their laps. “Ask her about the life-cycle of the Kree; she’s got that down cold.”

“It’s less complicated than a butterfly’s, though.”

Archie has taken the insect back and is watching it intently as it crawls round and round his finger. “Make butterfly, Da.”

“Can’t, old man. It takes time. And the caterpillar does it where no one can see.”

He looks over at her, offering the opportunity if she wants to use it. She takes a deep breath and nods, and he swings Archie to stand on the bench beside them. “Listen, monkey, Mama and Da have something important to tell you. You don’t have to worry about it now—”

“He doesn’t have to worry about it at all, Fitz!”

“Oh, if you’d rather—”

“No, sorry. Go ahead.”

“Thank you very much.” Fitz turns back to Archie, who is now intently watching the caterpillar inch along the back of the bench. “As I was saying, your Mama is kind of like a cocoon right now. Inside her there is a baby growing, and in a while—after Christmas—the baby will come out, just like the butterfly. And then there will be four people in our family, and you’ll be a big brother.” He’s trying to keep his voice calm and serious, but he obviously can’t help the grin that overtakes his face. She smiles too, taking Fitz’s hand and reaching for one of Archie’s.

“Isn’t that exciting, Archie?”

He looks at them both soberly. “What is brother?”

This is a question they didn’t expect and don’t quite know how to answer, both being only children. “Think of Skye,” she finally suggests, and between the two of them they eventually manage a respectable definition of “brother” as a male person who loves another person of a similar peer level in a protective but equal way. Their son listens patiently, used to long explanations. “Okay,” he says when they’re done, and tries to squirm off the bench. Before he goes back to the playground, she snags him by the back of his jacket and pulls in him into a hug so she can sniff his hair. Fitz thinks it’s weird, but the smell of baby shampoo and dirt and the sweet smell Archie’s had since he was born never fails to affect her. Now it almost makes her cry. “I love you, Archie. You know that, right?”

He pats her kindly. “Love you, Mama.”

As he runs away, Fitz nudges her with a smirk. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

“It went better than anticipated,” she admits.

“You forgot our son is a budding genius.”

“I mean, he’ll likely have more questions as it gets closer, but—”

“Mama!”

They turn to look at him where he stands, demanding, at the top of the slide.

“What is baby?”

She groans and puts her head in her hands. Fitz bites back a smile. “Well. That was an epic fail. Looks like we’ve got our work cut out for us.”


	2. Week 20

It is Week 20 and despite their best efforts they have not yet managed to convince Archie that the thing growing inside Mama is not a caterpillar. He understands “baby” now, pointing them out on the street and in books and on telly, but putting the two concepts together appears to be beyond him. They have tried everything they can think of: speaking to it as “baby”, showing him pictures of fetal development, watching videos of caterpillar metamorphosis. Archie is fascinated, but unmoved.   
One night after Archie has insisted on saying good night to “Mama, Da, and Callaper” Jemma cannot quite stop herself from bursting into tears. Panicked, Fitz brings her tea and a blanket and forcibly makes her sit on the sofa and rest while he finishes the bedtime routine. “Don’t move,” he says, “we’ll talk about this in a minute.”

It doesn’t matter, she thinks drearily, because she can’t explain it even if she had an hour. It’s silly, silly; she knows that she can’t expect him to understand everything at his age; she knows that by the time the baby comes he won’t be expecting a caterpillar; she knows he’s only two and she shouldn’t let it affect her so. “But it’s not a disgusting insect,” she wails to her slightly startled husband, “I feel wrong to let him keep calling it that. It can hear us now, you know!”

“Yeah, I know.” Fitz gestures vaguely to the timeline they have posted at Archie’s eye level. “Jemma, he will understand—”

“I know,” she says, sniffing. “I didn’t say it was rational.”

“And you and I, we know. We call it—”

“It!” she repeats, “It! Even the DWARFS had a gender!”

“The baby does too,” Fitz says, “we just don’t know it yet. Soon. When is the next appointment?”

She thinks as he puts his arm around her. “Next week, I think. I wish we had the ultrasound machine we made at the Playground. We could know now.”

“Would that make a difference?”

She nods a pathetic response into his shoulder. 

“Let’s see if we can move up the appointment, then. If that will help you. And then we can call—the baby—“she” or “he” or by a name, when we think of it. And maybe that will help him too.” He kisses the top of her head comfortingly. “It isn’t like either of us really believed it until we saw the ultrasound, that first time.”

“That’s not true,” she protests, but it kind of was. Oh, she had known logically what was happening. The physical changes were fairly indisputable. But somehow it had been unreal, like an elaborate theoretical exercise she and Fitz were playing with, until the very moment that they had finished their machine and she had moved the wand over her stomach and they had seen him, their son, sucking his thumb. Jemma would never forget Fitz’s expression of wonder as the tears rolled down his face. 

“Our baby,” he had said, hardly more than a whisper.

“Our baby.”  
She smiles now at the memory, feeling him smile too. Then a thought strikes and she sits up sharply. He makes a disgruntled noise as she turns to him, eyes alight with her idea. “Let’s take Archie to the appointment. I know it’s allowed. He can see for himself it’s not a caterpillar and know the same time we do if it’s a boy or a girl. If that doesn’t do it—”

“No, no, you’re right,” he says, catching her enthusiasm. “That’s the only thing left to do.”

They cannot move the appointment, but Jemma feels it’s all for the best as that gives them more time to prepare Archie. Even so, he spends the majority of the appointment asking “what is? what is?” every two seconds, too interested to listen to Fitz’s helpful explanations. When the technician pulls out the gel and begins applying it, he stands on Fitz’s leg and tries to poke his fingers in the canister.

The technician laughs and lets him. “Curious, isn’t he?”

“You’ve no idea,” Jemma says.

Fascinated by the goop now covering his hands, Archie doesn’t notice the image appearing on the screen until Fitz takes both his hands in an anti-bacterial wipe and points it out. “Look, monkey. There’s the baby.”

“Where?”

“There, on the television. Look!”

Archie looks, confused. The grainy, black-and-white picture doesn’t look anything like “baby” as he understands it. “What is?”

Fitz scoops him up and carries him over to the screen. “This is the baby. See, here’s its hand. And here’s its shoulder. And this—” His finger traces the line tenderly. “This is the baby’s head. Do you see the nose?”

Archie points automatically. “Where baby?”

“In Mama. The stick is like a camera that shows inside.”

Disbelieving, Archie watches the technician as she rolls the wand around, his eyes flicking back and forth. Jemma can see him try to put the facts together, the frown of concentration so much his father’s. “Baby…inside?” he asks finally. 

“Yes!” they say in unison, high-fiving with their eyes over his head. 

“Growing inside Mama?”

“Yes!”

He watches the screen another minute, very serious. Then he leans out of Fitz’s grasp and pats her tummy gently. “Hullo, baby.” 

She almost cries again. She would have, had the technician not picked precisely that moment to ask, “Would you like to find out the gender?”

She nods, and Fitz says yes as he attempts to keep Archie from getting his still gel-ly hands all over the monitor.

The technician moves the wand around, concentrating, before her face clears. “There,” she says. “Say hullo to your sister, Archie.”


	3. Week 26

It is Week 26 and they are just about to move the timeline marker into the last trimester when Archie pipes up, “How baby inside?”

Fitz looks at Jemma and Jemma looks at Fitz, both utterly at a loss for words.

“Well, it’s—”

“I mean, it’s—”

“No!” Archie says fiercely. “Take turns.”

They have been working very hard on that concept lately in preparation for the day when Archie will have to take turns with his sister, and he’s taking it to heart rather encouragingly. Unfortunately, it’s also disrupting their relationship patterns. “Why don’t you have first turn?” Fitz says before she can, and she shoots him a glare. Nowhere, nowhere in her research does it suggest the proper way to explain the Facts of Life to a two-year-old, so she is just going to have to do the best she can. Probably best to skip over the initial fertilization, she decides with a blush, and leap right to the zygote. Or, but, how else will she explain how children have DNA from both parents?

“Fine,” she huffs, “but I can’t do this without visual aids.”

After gathering her acoutrements, she sits them down on the couch with pretzels and tangerines. There is no way her husband will pay attention through the whole speech without snacks, much less her son. “So,” she began, “it starts with two cells. One, from a woman, is called an egg—”

“Toast?” Archie asks, craning his neck around to see his father.

“Shh, little man. Listen to Mama.”  
“—and the one from a man is called a sperm. It’s like a little fish.” She holds up two lumps of coloured clay. “Pretend these are the two cells.”

“Pink and blue, Simmons. Really.”

“Shh,” Archie says, “Mama’s turn.”

“Thank you, son. Now, inside the woman, the two cells come together and make one new cell.” She mixes the clay together deftly, smashing and squeezing to create one more-or-less purple lump. “This is important because the two cells by themselves don’t have all the information they need to grow. It’s like a zipper.”

“Because,” Fitz says, “the two sides apart are no good; they need to intersect to work. That’s a decent example.”

“Yes, thank you.” Her tone is withering, and Fitz shuts up. “But it’s still a tiny little cell, so small that no one can see it without looking in a microscope; it’s not a baby yet. It needs to be someplace safe so it can grow. Inside the mother, there’s a special place made just for that. The cell attaches itself and starts to duplicate—that’s like copying, Archie—until it grows into a whole baby.”

He makes a confused face. She sighs and starts pulling apart her clay ball. “Look, Archie. Here’s the tiny cell.” A bead-sized ball rolls in her palm. “It has instructions inside that tell it to make more. So then, like when you build with your blocks, it gets bigger and bigger. Like this.” She makes more beads and smashes them together until the lump is twice as big as it was before. “All this time, that’s what she’s doing in there. And getting food so she can grow strong enough to come outside. But she’s too small and fragile to be outside now.”

“But how, Mama?” he asks. 

Fitz, to his credit, manages to keep even his eyes silent.

“Because that’s where the cells are, monkey. All bodies are made up of cells. They’re like tiny little blocks that make us up.”

“What is?”

Oh Lord, she thinks, she’s never going to explain this properly if he doesn’t know what cells are. How can she explain…ah! “Am I a biochemist or not?” she says aloud. “To the lab, Fitz!”

It takes a bit to bundle everyone up for the run to the outdoor lab, but once there she flicks on the lights, double-checks the lock on the hazardous cabinet, and gets the microscope set up with slides of plant, animal, human, and alien specimens ready to look at before Archie has taken off his mittens.   
“Please don’t start with the Chitauri,” Fitz says, holding their son back from the stands of vials that contain her latest project. “Give him celery or something easy.” 

“What, you don’t think he would appreciate seeing the cells that saved his mother’s life?” But she obediently queues it up. “Come here, darling. See some cells.”

They take turns looking at each of the slides, Archie’s eyes getting progressively wider and his mouth into a rounder and rounder O. With each new sample, she explains where the cell comes from with as little gruesome detail as possible (for Fitz’s sake). “See leaf,” Archie demands, or “see skin,” or “see bug”. She feels the whole thing is going swimmingly until, after soberly examining the epidermal cells of a cat, he looks up at her and asks, “But Mama, how baby inside?”

Fitz does not quite hold back his guffaw this time, so she throws up her hands. “Your turn, then. I’ve done my absolute best.”

“The problem is,” he says grandly, “you’re making it far too complicated. Did you learn nothing from our research on child development?”

“Oh, well—” she begins, but he stops her with a look.

“I believe you said it was my turn?” 

“Da’s turn!”

She subsides into silence and folds her arms, dying to see what Fitz is going to pull out that she hasn’t already tried.

“It’s like this,” he says when he has Archie’s attention. “How a baby gets inside a mama and stays there is a really, really amazing thing. When you’re older, you’ll understand it better. For now, you just have to trust Mama and me when we tell you that’s what happens.”

“But how, Da?”

She raises both eyebrows at him mockingly; he huffs and doesn’t meet her eyes. “Frankly, Archie, it’s the power of science.”

Horrified, she watches a light go on in Archie’s eyes. “The Power of Science!” he crows, finally satisfied. “Now, see water?”


	4. Week 32

It is Week 32, and Jemma is exhausted. Really, truly exhausted. The baby is apparently on US Time because she is up and mobile all night long, keeping Jemma awake; Archie, meanwhile, has suddenly decided that he’s too old to take naps and fights them with every bit of his two-year-old will-power, effectively eliminating her chance to sleep during the day. But, by some miracle, this afternoon they are both sleeping at once. She had taken Archie from the lab to give Fitz a few hours of unimpeded work and brought him into her and Fitz’s room, thinking that if she could just lie down a minute that might be enough. It has worked better than she anticipated. Archie is curled up like a cat and sleeping like a rock beside her. She should perhaps take this opportunity to sneak away and plan dinner (her turn to cook), but she simply cannot make herself move.

She is not quite asleep, just drowsing dreamily with one hand on her stomach and the other stroking Archie’s hair, when she hears the kitchen door shutting. The noise wakes her just enough that she notices the other little noises Fitz makes as he moves through the house: the cupboards opening and closing; his jacket falling off the hook with a thump; the creak of the stairs under careful feet. She knows when he reaches their room, and opens her eyes to smile at him as he stands in the doorway. “Did you finish?” she asks quietly.

He finishes peeling his tangerine and puts the rinds in his pocket. She hopes he remembers to take them out before putting his trousers in the wash. “Almost. Another day. It would be faster if you were there.”

The forced exclusion from the lab wears on both of them; she misses science and he misses her. It’s too dangerous for a developing fetus, though, so they make the best of it. He sections out the orange and eats it faster than seems humanly possible.

“You three look cosy. I didn’t wake you?”

“No.”

“How’d you get him to sleep?”

“He wanted to talk to her.” She glances down at her children, the one she can see and the one she can’t yet, and smiles fondly. Archie’s got one thumb in his mouth and the other lying where it fell off her bump as he relaxed, his long one-sided discourse slowly trailing off into murmurs. Talked himself to sleep, as he often does. 

Fitz smiles too. “What did he have to tell her?”

“Something about the stars, I think. Were you telling him about—”

“—the Pleiades, the other night. I didn’t think he was listening.”

“He got more of it than you think; he even remembered about the brown dwarfs.”

Fitz shakes his head, amazed. “A budding astronomer. The next Jane Foster.”

“I thought he was going to be the next Bruce Banner?” she teases, picking up the game they have played since before Archie was born.

“The next Tony Stark.”

“Impossible,” she says, “you’re the next Tony Stark.”

It is not easy for him to take these compliments any more, but he sends her a look like she is the sun coming out from behind a cloud and comes softly into the room, crouching by the bed to take her free hand. “No, that’s impossible and I’ll tell you why. I would be terrified to fly around in the suit.”

“I know,” she says, because she knows everything about him. “But you are my hero.”

Pressing a kiss to her knuckles before letting go, he reaches across Archie and gently spreads his fingers over her stomach. She feels their baby inside move, just a little, like she knows that Da is there. “What will she be, do you think?”

Jemma lays back on the pillow and closes her eyes. “Oh, I don’t know. If Archie is an astrophysicist it might be nice to have something more theoretical in the family. We could do with a mathematician.”

“Or she could be an oceanographer. Chart the other Last Great Frontier.” 

“Or study things at the atomic level—very small instead of very large.”

“Or there’s always the always popular primatologist.”

“Nobody except you and Jane Goodall—”

“Those are chimpanzees.”

“I know, Fitz.” She sighs, then is struck by a sudden thought. “Or I suppose she could be something else entirely. A poet or a baker or—or an athlete.”

“An athlete?” he repeats, incredulous. “How would we end up with an athlete?”

“It’s nature and nurture, Fitz. Studies go both ways.” 

“Huh.” He considers that a minute before patting the baby lightly. “You can do whatever you want, sweetheart, as long as you finish school first. Only promise me you’ll take after your mother and I’ll be satisfied.”

“My brains?” she asks lightly, feeling a glow warm her chest. “My fashion sense? My inability to lie? My—”

“All of it,” he murmurs, and comes up to kiss her. His left hand brushes her hair back from her face while the right remains where it is, so that the two of them envelop her and Archie and the baby, holding them firm and fast and safe next to his heart. She’s getting unbearably sappy, she knows, but the whole thing is rather perfect.

When he pulls away, she puts her palm to his cheek and beams up at him. Fifteen years she’s been looking at him, and she still forgets how blue his eyes are—though, to be honest, they likely look bluer now in contrast to the dark circles below. “I wouldn’t like that very much,” she says.

He looks at her confusedly, fully aware that she can’t mean the kissing.

“If she only took after me. Her father is rather marvelous, too.”

“Oh, well,” he says, somewhat embarrassed, “if you insist. Your wish is my command.”

“Truly?”

“Ye-es,” he says warily.

“Then come lie with me, Fitz. There’s nothing else to do right now.”

He doesn’t need to be asked twice, coming around to the other side of the bed to spoon up against her. Carefully, so as not to disturb their son, they rearrange themselves into three c-shapes, small to large to slightly larger, held together by their clasped hands on the other side of Archie. 

“Good thing I had that tangerine,” Fitz murmurs sleepily into her neck before following it with a kiss. “I have a feeling we’re going to miss dinner.”

His arm becomes very heavy and she snuggles into him, reaching out with one hand to touch their son. And then, finally, she sleeps too.


	5. Week 37

It is Week 37, and Skye has come to stay until the baby’s born. They all—that is, Skye, Fitz, Simmons, and Coulson—agreed it would be best for Archie to get used to having her sleep over before it’s for real, for Skye to get a feel for his schedule and how the house runs before she has to do it herself. 

“I’m technically on call in case of galactic emergency,” Skye says, grabbing Jemma around the neck with one arm and Fitz with the other, “but I told Coulson ONLY if there’s actual aliens pouring out of the sky. I even took out the standard ‘Thor’ clause.”

“We’re so grateful,” Fitz says dryly.

She takes the hint and lets them go, only to bend over and coo at Jemma’s stomach. “We’ve got to get this baby born, right? Man, you look ready to pop. Thanks for holding on so long, sweetie!”

“It’s been touch-and-go,” Jemma says, stroking the round lump ruefully. Braxton-Hicks contractions can feel an awful lot like the real thing; poor Fitz has been on high alert for the last week straight and is starting to crack. “I must say I’ll be glad to not be pregnant anymore.”

Fitz nods fervently. “Me too.” 

“Me too!”

They turn to look at Archie, who has made himself a nest of blankets on the living room floor. He pulls one up over his head and grins up at them, his round little face the only part of him visible. Skye abandons Jemma and lays on her front next to the pile. “And what,” she asks, poking the general vicinity of his belly, “do you know about being pregnant?”

“The Power of Science!”

Fitz groans and hides his face in his hands. “I swear I didn’t mean to. The Talk is all on me when it’s time.”

Raising both eyebrows, amused, Skye peers up through her fringe. “I would pay money to see that.”

“Oh, no, you are not invited.”

“We’re hopeful,” Jemma says, “that when she comes he’ll be too interested in her to think a great deal about it. I’m fairly certain I blocked out my early introduction to the facts of life until later.”

“And how old was that?”

She can’t quite remember, so she tries to place it by the color of her bedroom walls. “Eleven?”

“Unbelievable.” Skye shakes her head and sits up, dusting herself off. “Hey, can he have his p-r-e-s-e-n-t now?”

“Only if it’s from May,” Fitz says firmly. When Archie was born he received a ride-able motorized car, one of Coulson’s prized vintage grenades, and a working drill set with a real diamond tipped bit. May, on the other hand, sent crib sheets.

“Spoilsport,” Skye pouts. “We’ll all just have to settle for your present, then.” Going to her backpack, she digs around for a bit before pulling out a slim silver disk. “I hope this works. You guys have an all-region player, right?”

If there is going to be a movie, there must also be popcorn; so has it ever been with the three of them, and so shall it ever be. Skye insists that Jemma sit on the sofa and takes Archie into the kitchen to show her where everything is. Plopping down beside her, Fitz sighs heavily. “It’s good she’s here,” he says.

“Yes.”

“But it makes it seem awfully close.”

“It is, Fitz,” she says fondly, resting a hand on the back of his neck.

“Are you ready?”

“Yes,” she says, and he breaks in, “Good, good. Me too.” His answer is so quick that she doesn’t add “but I’m nervous, too,” like she meant to. If he is not nervous there isn’t any reason for her to be. At least, there isn’t any reason for her to say so.

Skye and Archie return in just slightly over the three minutes and twenty seconds needed to fill their giant plastic popcorn bowl and smash onto the sofa on either side of Fitz and Jemma. Fitz, as is his wont, takes the popcorn. Snuggling Archie to her, Skye points the remote at the screen. “Now, watch, little man. This is highly classified footage you’re about to see.”

Skye’s face appears on the screen, the angle obviously suggesting she’s filming with her phone. “All right,” screen-Skye says, “this is a historic occasion. Probably the participants won’t enjoy it now, but this is for posterity, so they’re just going to have to suck it up.” The camera swings around to show—“Is that our Playground lab?” Jemma exclaims; “Gone a bit to pieces, hasn’t it?” Fitz adds before Skye shushes him—and rounds a corner. And there they are, looking at something on the holotable. Fitz’s arms are wrapped around her from behind, holding her tight; she pushes her hair to one side so he can see from his stance with his chin on her shoulder.

“Hey lovebirds,” screen-Skye shouts. They quickly look back at her. Jemma would swear that screen-Fitz is blushing. 

“Look, Mama,” Archie crows, smacking her arm gently, “you and Da!”

“Yes, darling,” she says. “Skye, what—“

“Just watch.” 

“We’ve said a million times—“ screen-Fitz begins huffily.

“That you would prefer I not call you that, I know. But since we’re about to be presented with incontroversial, physical proof that you are, in fact, lovebirds—”

“The wedding wasn’t enough?” screen-Jemma asks.

“—all bets are off, thank you very much. Come over here right now! This is for posterity!”

Their onscreen counterparts obey grumpily. The camera turns again, tracking Skye as she comes to stand between them. “Future viewers,” she says, “this is a momentous occasion. According to AC, it is nearly unprecedented for two SHIELD agents to (a) have a healthy romantic relationship, (b) feel secure enough in it to make any sort of lifetime commitments, and (c) feel secure enough in that to take on the added risk of reproduction. And yet, these two mild-mannered scientists before you have done it. Can we get some reactions?”

Screen-Fitz grumps, screen-Jemma blushes, screen-Skye laughs, and real-Jemma turns to her friend with tears in her eyes. “Skye! You kept this?”

“Not just this.” Skye looks like the cat that swallowed the canary. “Keep watching.”

They watch, stunned, as that video leads to one of them coming back from their first sonogram, to a dinner conversation about baby names, to one from their going-away party, to the series of videos they had sent back to the team right after they moved into the house. Before their eyes, her stomach swells until she is as big as she is now. Archie tunes back in enough to say, “Mama, Baby! How?”

“That’s you, monkey.”

His forehead wrinkles for a moment before he, apparently, figures it out. “The power of science?”

Standing, Skye tips him upside down and tickles his exposed tummy. “Oh, you’re just going to be great at this. Want more popcorn?”

Of course, he does. They head noisily into the kitchen making animal sounds. Jemma looks at Fitz and they both sigh. “He is never going to sleep tonight,” he says, taking her hand.

She rests her head on his shoulder. “Fortunately, that’s not our problem.”

The home movie keeps playing and they watch it idly, attention drifting in and out. Younger FitzSimmons run about, make cow eyes at each other, bicker easily—all of the things they usually do. Jemma remembers, though, that they had argued a good deal more in the month leading up to Archie’s birth than at any other time in their partnership. There was one time…”Fitz?”

He makes an interrogative noise and she wonders if he’s almost asleep.

“Remember that fight we had about the best way to get to the hospital?”

“Yes,” he says, “but I try not to. It was stupid.”

“Why did we even argue about it?”

He doesn’t open his eyes. “Displaced emotion.”

She shifts a little so she can see him better. “What?”

“Come back here,” he says, pushing her head back down gently. “Well, I was scared out of my mind to be a father and I bet you were the same. So we argued about stupid stuff so we wouldn’t have to think about it.”

“That’s awfully psychological of you.”

“You think I limit myself to one branch of the discipline?”

“No.” Then what he said strikes her, and she repeats it to make sure. “You were scared to be a father?”

It is his turn to sit up surprised. “Yeah. Yeah, of course. You didn’t know?”

“No.”

“I didn’t have a father, Jemma, how was I supposed to be one? Plus, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m not the most patient man in the world. I was worried.” He shakes his head. “You really didn’t know?”

“No,” she says again. “I wasn’t worried.”

“Well, of course not, you do everything perfectly—”

“Fitz.” She takes his other hand, desperate to make sure he understands. “I wasn’t worried about you. I knew you would be an incredible father.”

He nods, but his eyes don’t believe her. “How?”

What kind of question is that? “Because I know you, idiot, I’ve known you half my life. You don’t need a father to know how to be one. You’re honest and brave and loyal and infinitely patient with other people when it matters, and when you love someone you love them with all your heart. That’s enough.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” she says, and kisses him hard. 

“Skye will make fun of us if she sees,” he mumbles into her mouth.

She pulls back just enough to ask, “Do you care?”

He does not.

“I’m nervous this time,” she confesses, eventually, putting her head back on his shoulder. “What if Archie’s a fluke? What if I can’t do a girl? What if one of them gets pushed to the side inadvertently while we pay attention to the other one? There’s so many unknowns, Fitz.”

“That’s just silly,” he says. “We’ve already done it once. We now have sufficient data to draw correct conclusions.”

“So Archie was just our first experiment?”

“That’s awful.”

“But—“

“Yes.” She can feel him smiling. “Anyway, it’s borne out my hypothesis.”

“Which one?”

“I knew you were going to be an amazing mother, too.”


	6. Week 39

It is Week 39, and Fitz is looking at their daughter tucked safely in his arms like he is suddenly seeing the world in colour for the first time. His smile stretches from ear to ear and Jemma would feel a bit offended if she didn’t have a matching, if slightly more exhausted, grin on her own face.

“Stop hogging her,” she says.

“Hey, now, you had her all to yourself for nine months,” he says, not looking up. “It’s Da’s turn.” 

“But not to see her.”

“Your loss.” He runs a reverent finger over their daughter’s cheeks, her nose, the soft fuzz on the top of her head. “She’s beautiful, Jemma, properly gorgeous.”

“I rather guessed that from my first brief look.”

“No, but really. I’ve never seen a baby so beautiful.”

“You’ve only seen two,” she reminds him, laughing.

“Well, she’s the top of the list. Don’t let Archie hear me say that.”

“I won’t.” She sits up, wincing a little, suddenly missing their boy. “Did Skye say when they would be here?”

“ ‘ASAP’, and I quote. She—” He stops, holding his breath, and his face grows even softer. When he speaks, it’s barely a whisper. “Hello, baby girl. It’s me, Da. Yes, remember? Remember? Yesterday we talked about nuclear fusion?”

“How did that come up?” she asks.

He doesn’t answer, watching the baby’s gaze slide across his face, matching her tiny mouth movements with larger ones of his own. “Jemma, she has your eyes. They’re already brown.”

“That’s—”

“—impossible, yeah, I know, but it’s true anyway. I’d know them anywhere.”

“I suppose it’s only fair,” she allows, “since Archie’s eyes are blue. I can’t have it all my own way.”

He smiles at her for a millisecond, hardly able to drag his attention away from the baby. “No, Mama can’t, can she? Besides, you’re lucky, sweet girl. There aren’t prettier, kinder, smarter, better eyes anywhere in the universe.”

The compliment is almost sweeter coming second-hand and she blows him a kiss, eyes moist. 

“Which reminds me,” he continues conversationally, “I told your brother this, too. I promise to love you with my whole heart. But it’s only fair for you to know that I love your mother more than that.”

That tips her over the edge and the tears spill over her cheeks. She knows, she always knows, but their three words never fail to have that effect even when she’s not exhausted and hormonal. “Come here, sweetheart,” she demands, holding out a hand.

“Is this a covert attempt to steal our daughter from me?”

“No, it’s a not-so-covert attempt to get you over here so I can kiss you silly.”

His eyes light up, if it’s possible for them to get any brighter than they are, and he carefully tucks their daughter in the crook of his good arm and comes to put the other around her. “I can handle that, then.”

She ghosts her fingers across the back of his neck before pulling him down to press a kiss to every curve of his face. “You have always been more than that.”

“Well, now,” he objects, smiling, “that’s not entirely true.”

“Yes, it is.”

“You were just in labour, so I’m not going to argue with you.”

“Clever Fitz.” Snuggling into his side, she looks down at their now sleeping daughter. “She is rather pretty, isn’t she? Obviously I can’t see her eyes now. But these are your fingers. Look how long they are.”

He takes one of the baby’s tiny hands and spreads it out on the back of his, considering. “Maybe,” he allows. “Let’s hope they both work all the time, yeah?” There is no bitterness in his tone. They have come to grips with the fact that the lingering effects of the med-pod are the price they pay for their current happiness. But that happiness is so complete, they’ve agreed, that it’s hard to regret what came before.

“Knock-knock! Where is my niece?” 

Skye pops her head in the door, leaning back to counter the weight of Archie as he tries to lunge out of her arms. “Whoa, there, little man. Remember we talked about this. Be gentle.”

Jemma’s heart leaps and she leans forward, opening her arms invitingly. “It’s all right, darling. Come see Mama.”

As soon as Skye sets him down he runs towards the bed, nearly tripping over his feet in his haste, and launches himself at her. “Mama, I missed you!”

Laughing, she grabs him by his pants and hauls him up to sit next to her. “I missed you too, monkey. Come meet your sister.”

He peeps over her arm seriously, holding his breath. Pulling the blanket away from the baby’s face, Fitz tips her up so Archie can see. “What do you think?”

Archie looks up at Jemma, eyes wide. “Baby out!”

“Yes, darling. She is.” 

“How?”

“The power of science!” Skye pipes up, unabashed by the glares she receives from both Jemma and Fitz. Fortunately, Archie doesn’t seem to hear her, completely enthralled by the tiny human in front of him. He reaches out a tentative hand, then pulls it back guiltily. 

“It’s all right,” Fitz says encouragingly, “you can touch her.”

Archie glances at Jemma for further permission. At her encouraging nod, he gently pats the lump of swaddling blankets. “Is cocoon, Da?”

“Just a blanket. Like yours.”

“What is called?”

“Georgie,” Jemma answers, “Georgia Rose.”

“That’s a good name.” Skye nods and repeats it, testing the name on her tongue. “But please tell me that you didn’t name her after your favourite Companion.”

“It’s a nature name!”

“So what if we did?”

“Like you and May – even Melinda means ‘bumblebee’ if it comes to it-”

“She could do worse as a role model than Rose Tyler-”

Skye holds up a hand to forestall the flow. “Okay, stop. You can name your offspring whatever you want. Aunts have nickname privilege, anyway. The next pressing question is: are you going to let me hold her, or is Fitz going to hog the baby until his arm falls asleep?”

“Actually,” Fitz says, ignoring Jemma’s pointed look, “Archie gets dibs. If he comes to sit on this side of Mama, he can hold her himself.”

It requires a bit of finagling to get Archie over her without hurting too badly, but soon enough he is tucked between her right side and Fitz’s left, both of his elbows propped up on pillows and arms held out expectantly. Gently but surely, Fitz lowers Georgie into her brother’s waiting arms, carefully cradling her head with one hand.  


“There, baby girl. This is your brother, Archie.”

Archie’s little hands wrap carefully around the blanket. Jemma thinks she has never seen anything like the awe in his face. Looking up at her husband, she is not surprised to see tears glittering in his eyes; they are, yet again, a perfect pair.

“Hi baby,” Archie says.


End file.
